Warlock by Andre Norton

Those eyes searched into her, seemed to pick at her mind.

“It is true that you have done more than we believed you could, Dreamer. Yet you are not one with us in any power save that which we have granted you. Why do you presume to say that we are now to dream the same dream?”

“Because if we do not, then may all dreams be broken.”

“And that you truly believe.” Not a question but a statement. However, Charis made a quick answer.

“That I truly believe.”

“Then you have learned more than how to break a restraint dream since last we have stood together. What have you learned?”

“That those from off-world are more powerful than we thought, that they have with them that which renders all dreams as nothing and protects them, that their desire here may be to gather to them the Power that they may use it for their own purposes in other places.”

Again that faint pick, pick to uncover the truth behind her words. Then, “But of these facts you are not wholly sure.”

“Not wholly,” Charis agreed. “Every pattern is made of lines. So, when you have long known a design and see only a portion of it, you can still envision the whole.”

“And this is a pattern you have known before?”

“It is one I have heard of, one Lantee has heard of.”

Had she made a mistake in mentioning the Survey man’s name? That chill which reached from mind to mind suggested that she had.

“What has any man-thing to do with this?” A hissing question hot with rising ire.

Charis’s anger woke in turn. “This much, Wise One. He may be dead now, striving to carry war to the enemy—your enemy!”

“How can that be when he is—” The thought chain between them broke in mid-sentence. Lids dropped above the yellow eyes. The feeling of withdrawal was so sharp that Charis almost expected the Wyvern to vanish from her chair. Yet her body was still there although her mind was elsewhere.

The minutes were endless, then Charis knew the Wyvern had returned. Fingers had clenched about the chair arms, the yellow eyes were open, fixed upon the girl, though there was no touch of mind.

Charis took a chance. “You did not find him, Wise One, where you had sent him?”

No answer, but Charis was sure the Wyvern understood.

“He is not there,” the girl continued, “nor has he been for some time. As I told you in truth, he has been about your business elsewhere. And perhaps to his hurt.”

“He did not free himself.” The frantic grip of the Wyvern’s hands relaxed. Charis thought that the witch was annoyed because she had betrayed her agitation so much. “He could not. He is a man-thing—”

“But also a dreamer after his own fashion,” Charis struck in. “And though you strove to remove him from this struggle, yet he returned—not to war against you but against those who threaten all dreaming.”

“What dream have you that you can do this thing?”

“Not my dream alone,” Charis retorted. “But his dream also, and other dreams together, as a key to unlock this prison.”

“I must believe that this is so. Yet such an act is beyond all reason.”

“All reason known to you and your sharers of dreams. Look, you.” Charis moved to the table, stretched out hand and arm into the full path of the light. “Am I like unto you in the sight of all? Do I wear any dream patterns set upon my skin? Yet I dream. However, need my dreams be any more like unto yours than my body covering resembles that you wear? Perhaps even the Power when I bend it to my will is not the same.”

“Words—”

“Words with proving action behind them. You sent me hence and bade me dream myself out of your net if I could, and so I did. Then with Shann Lantee I dreamed a way free from a deeper prison. Did you believe I could do these things?”

“Believe? No,” the Wyvern replied. “But there is always a chance of difference, a variable within the Power. And the Talking Rods had an answer for you when we called upon Those Who Once Were. Very well, these are truths accepted. Now say again what you believe to be a truth that had no full proving.”

Charis retold her discoveries at the base, Lantee’s deductions.

“A machine which nullifies the Power.” The Wyvern led her back to that. “Such you believe can exist?”

“Yes. Also—what if such a thing be brought to use against you even in this very stronghold? With your dreams broken, how may you fight against slaying weapons in the hands of those who come?”

“We knew—” the Wyvern was musing “—that we could not send dreams to trouble these strangers. Or bring back—” she spoke in anger “—to their proper places those who have broken the law. But that all this is being done so that they may take the Power from us—that we had not thought upon.”

Charis knew a small spark of relief. That last admission had changed her own status. It was as if she were now admitted in a small way into the Wyvern ranks.

“However, they must be ignorant to believe that man-things can use the Power.”

“Lantee does,” Charis reminded her. “And what of the other you have known as a friend here—Thorvald?”

Hesitation, then an unwilling answer. “He, too, in a small way. An ability, you believe, that these others may share because they are not blood, bone, and skin with us?”

“Is that so hard to understand?”

“And what have you to suggest, Dreamer? You speak of battles and warfare. Our only weapons have been our dreams, and now you say they will avail nothing. So—what is your answer?” Hostility again.

And Charis had little with which to meet that. “What these invaders do here is against the law of our kind as much as it is a threat against your people. There are those who will speedily come to our aid.”

“From where? Winging down from other stars? And how will you call them? How long will it take them to arrive?”

“I do not know. But you have the man Thorvald, and he would have answers to these questions.”

“It would seem, Dreamer, that you believe I, Gidaya, can give all orders here, do as I wish. But that is not so. We sit in council. And there are those among us who would not listen to any truth if you spoke it. We have been divided upon this matter from the first, and to talk against attacking now will require much persuasion. Should you stand openly with me, that persuasion would fail.”

“I understand. But also, as you have said to me, Wise One, there is such a thing as a threat by time. Let me speak to Thorvald if you have him here, and learn from him what may be done to gain help from off-world.” Had she gone too far with that plea?

Gidaya did not answer at once. “Thorvald is in safe keeping—” she paused and then added “—though I wonder now about the safety of any keeping. Very well, you may go to him. It may be that I shall say to those who will object that you are joining him in custody.”

“If you wish.” Charis suspected that Gidaya would offer that as a sop to the anti-off-world party. But she greatly doubted that the Wyvern believed any longer Charis herself could be controlled by the Power.

“Go!”

At least Thorvald had not been consigned to that place of nothingness which had been Lantee’s prison. Charis stood in a very ordinary sleeping room of the Citadel, its only difference from the one she had called her own being that it had no window. On the pile of sleep-mats lay a man, breathing heavily. His head turned and he muttered, but she could not make out his words.

“Thorvald! Ragnar Thorvald!”

The bronze-yellow head did not lift from the mats nor his eyes open. Charis crossed to kneel beside him.

“Thorvald!”

He was muttering again. And his hand balled into a fist and shot out to thud home painfully on her forearm. Dreaming! Naturally? Or in some fantasy induced by the Wyverns? But she must wake him now.

“Thorvald!” Charis called louder and took hold of his shoulder, shaking him vigorously.

He struck out again, sending her rolling back against the wall, then sat up, his eyes open at last, looking about wildly. But as he sighted her he tensed.

“You’re real—I think!” His emphatic assertion slid into a less confident conclusion.

“I’m Charis Nordholm.” She crouched against the wall, rubbing her arm. “And I’m real all right. This is no dream.”

No, no dream but the worst of trouble. And did Thorvald have any of the answers after all? She only hoped that he did.